The Rules of Attraction

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she says, shrugging helplessly.



She walks over to the chair I was sitting in and starts to put on her shoes.



“I don’t want you to … to go,” Vittorio calls, from the couch, eyes closed.



“Vittorio, we have to. It’s late,” she says soothingly.



“Put them on outside,” I tell her. “Let’s go.”



“Oh Sean,” she says. “Shut up.”



“Where’s Marie?” I ask. “Don’t tell me to shut up.”



“She drove Mona and Trav back to their place.” She reaches for her purse on the table.



Vittorio starts to get up from the couch but he can’t balance himself and he falls over against the table, crashing onto the floor, starting to moan.



“Oh my God,” Lauren says, rushing over to him.



“I don’t want to go to Italy,” he bellows. She kneels beside him and tries to push him up against the couch. “I don’t want to go,” he says again.



“Lauren, let’s get the hell out of here,” I yell.



“Don’t you have any compassion?” she yells back.



“Lauren, the man is a drunk,” I shout. “Let’s get out of here.”



“Don’t go Lauren … don’t go,” Vittorio groans, eyes shut.



“I’m here Vittorio, I’m here,” she says. “Sean, get a washcloth.”



“Absolutely not,” I shout at her.



“Lauren,” Vittorio repeats, still moaning, crouched up like a small child. “Where’s Lauren? Lauren?”



“Lauren,” I say, standing there, above them, completely offended by the scene.



“I’m here,” she says, “I’m here Vittorio. Don’t worry.” She runs her hand along his brow, then looks at me. “If you won’t get a washcloth and if you’re not going to help me, you can leave now and wait outside if you want to. I’m staying.”



It’s over. I tell her that I’m leaving, but it doesn’t matter. I walk to the front door and wait to see if she’ll come. I stand there for three minutes and only hear whispering from the living room. Then I walk outside, down the path and out the gate. It’s cold now, and I put the jacket I had taken off back on. I sit on the curb across the street from the house. The lights in Vittorio’s room go on, then after a minute, go off. I wait on the curb, not knowing what to do, staring at the house, for a long time.



I go back to campus, find Judy in The Pub, and we smoke some pot and then go back to my room, where there’s a threatening note on my door from Rupert (“UOWEME”). I crumple it up, and hand it to Judy. Judy asks me who it’s from. I tell her Frank. She gets sad and starts crying and tells me that Franklin’s over with, that she never liked him, that they should have never gotten together. After she feels better, she starts coming on to me.



“What am I going to tell Lauren?” I ask, watching her undress after we’ve made out.



“I don’t know,” she says.



“That I f**ked you?” I suggest.



“No. No,” she says, though I bet she likes the idea.



LAUREN Lying naked in my bed. Late. Twelve-thirty. Room next door someone is playing the new Talking Heads record. Finish the cigarette I’m smoking and light another one. Look at Sean. He looks away guiltily. Leans his head against the wall. Sara’s cat, Seymour, walks up to the bed and jumps into my lap, meowing hungrily. Stroke the cat’s head and look back at Sean. He looks back at me, then to the space on the wall he’s been staring at. He knows I want him to leave. He has that distinct understanding etched across his face; get dressed, go, I’m thinking. I yawn. In the next room the record skips, begins again. I don’t want him to see me naked so I pull the sheet around me.



“Say something,” I say, petting the cat.



“Like what?”



The cat looks at him and mews.



“Like why are we always in my room?” I ask.



“Because I have this awful French roommate, that’s why,” he says.



“Is he awful because he’s French?”



“Yes,” he nods.



“God.” Look at the cigarette I’m holding; the gold bracelet on wrist dangling. He’s looking at me. He knows I’m smoking the cigarette just to irritate him, blowing smoke his way.



“You know what he did?” he asks me.



Smell my wrist, then fingers. “What?”



“Since it’s Halloween tomorrow he carved a pumpkin he bought in town and put one of those French hats on it, a chapeau, you know, one of those berets and he put it on the f**king pumpkin, and wrote on the back of it, ‘Paris Is Forever.’”